Dante/Hafiz II: The Gaze

“Fa che le viste non risparmi:
posto t’avem dinanzi a li smeraldi
ond’ Amor già ti trasse le sue armi.”
[“Do not spare your eyes; we have placed you before the emeralds whence Amor formerly drew his bow at you.”]
– Dante

بعد از این روی من و آینه وصف جمال
که در آن جا خبر از جلوه ذاتم دادند
[From now on, I will gaze on the mirror that reflects his Face, for there I was informed of God’s manifestation.]
–Hafiz

Continuing a conversation between Dante and Hafiz that began last spring with Reading the Sigh (see https://archive.org/details/ReadingTheSigh), this event features two lectures on the poetics of the gaze.

Introduction
Nicola Masciandaro

“Dante’s Gaze”
Franco Masciandaro

“Annihilation in the Gaze of Love’s Infinity—A Detailed Reading of Vision in Hafiz’s Poetry”
Peter Booth

Franco Masciandaro (Ph.D., Romance Languages and Literatures, Harvard University, 1971) is Professor Emeritus at the University of Connecticut and a specialist in medieval and renaissance Italian literature. He is the author of La problematica del tempo nella Commedia (Longo Editore, 1976), Dante as Dramatist: The Myth of the Earthly Paradise and Tragic Vision in the Divine Comedy (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), La conoscenza viva: Letture fenomenologiche da Dante a Machiavelli (Longo, 1998), and The Stranger as Friend: The Poetics of Friendship in Homer, Dante, and Boccaccio (Firenze University Press, 2013).

Peter Booth received his B.A. in English Literature from Bard College and studied Persian Language and Literature at the graduate school of Harvard University (with Anne Marie Schimmel and Wheeler Thackston). In 1977-8, on a scholarship from the Shah of Iran, he studied Persian Literature at Ferdowsi University in Mashhad. He was a resident for 32 years in Avatar Meher Baba’s Home, “Meherabad” in rural India. He is currently completing a detailed study of the poetry of Hafiz of Shiraz with numerous new translations.

CUNY Graduate Center, Room 5414
365 5th Ave, New York City
Saturday October 22
3:30-6:00 pm

Dante/Hafiz II: The Gaze is organized by Nicola Masciandaro, Oyku Tekten, and the KAF Collective.

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